Blogo 2 – Native WordPress editing to Mac OS X – Review

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I don’t always have time to blog or share things I’d like to talk about, but when I do I want it to be as easy and painless as possible. WordPress makes blogging possible, somewhat easier but not painless.

I can’t post an blog entry without an internet connection. I can take notes, type out the body of the post and then cut and paste it later. Which is a pain and it doesn’t always go as planned. Formatting sometimes doesn’t transfer, photos don’t stay where you put them. Which all means that I need to get online and make the corrections.

What I wanted was a way to blog on my desktop or laptop without an internet connection. I’ve looked at several options and most fell very short of my goal. The features didn’t meat my needs or they weren’t being updated and supported.

Blogo was high on the list. It allows multiple blogs, access to old post and pages, has extensions for that allow Safari and Chrome to send quotes, images, links and embed video from various sites directly in to your blog post. (Don’t worry Firefox and Opera – you’ve got extensions coming your way.)

Blogo doesn’t allow you to upload a video directly from your computer to your site but does allow you to embed or link to a video from various services. Dailymotion, Vine, Instagram, YouTube and Vimeo are usable through the extension. By using these services I’m not using the bandwidth or storage allowed to my hosting account. Most of these services allow videos to be Unlisted. YouTube, Vimeo and Dailymotion all have some way for you to monetize your videos.

Images are easy to insert, but I haven’t found a way to set the image alignment. Bummer – an oversight? But why? Perhaps they are working on it, but that should have been a basic feature. (Update – I did find it, but it doesn’t work well. The content menu shows up briefly but doesn’t fit on the screen.)

Blogo has an interface which is easy on the eyes. Icons are simple and easy to understand. I did start using it without watching the tutorials or reading the help docs. I did check out a few of my questions after I’d started using it.

With the live preview – you can check and see how it will look before you go live. You can use a generic template or a live template from you site to view the preview.

Would I suggest it to a friend? Yes. Does it make the world a better and safer blogging world? No, but a bit easier. On a scale of 1-10 I’d give it a strong 8. With a few tweaks Blogo is on it’s way to a 10.